Immediately after the enemy fleet jumped into close quarters combat, the battle group’s comms net lit up like a Christmas tree. Foremost the Tindrel screaming with anger, but urgent and stressed instructions from captains of individual ships as they allocated rally points.

The small number of Qalian-Vosh ships began grouping together and sharing their mobility bubble, becoming more than the sum of their parts all while under heavy fire. One of them didn’t make it and erupted into a goo-based fireball…then started heading out of the battle area to await the end of the simulation.

The Outreman portion of the battle group were caught on the broadside with open space cut off by the mass of enemy ships. They were also strung out in a line with only partially overlapping fields of fire. However, the OSC had trained to survive this sort of gambit before , and their ships immediately began turning so they were headed into the asteroid field. They redirected most of their shielding power to the stern, and used all their armaments on their sides to support the ships to either side. They then attempted to retreat into the relative safety of the asteroid field, leaving the QV vessels nearly surrounded.
[hr]
“Negatory. They look like they’re on the move…aaand they’re bouncing off every satellite in the system. There aren’t that many signatures, but they could be bundled together. We aren’t experts in signals from known civilisations, we’re equipped to notice anomalies to known patterns. We’d need the military or, or… Naval Intelligence or something.”